Dropped by the old apartment to give my former neighbors the cat food from the pet expo that my cats rejected and a cat carrier for their stray cat colony. On the way to a friend’s wake. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
A fellow journo wrote 30 last Monday. I had worked alongside her for years, especially during macroeconomic coverages. We were both senior lecturers at the college where we had our graduate studies.
She was also a guest lecturer in one of the classes I taught.
She and I covered a week-long conference in Yokohama, Japan in 2017 and we stuffed our faces with yummy wagyu beef and the best sushi that the Japanese government can offer. Together with another macroeconomic Pinoy journo, they wiped out all the Nozaki’s corned beef in all of the kombini within our area.
Takeaway coffeeafter leaving the wake. A long drive before me. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
As I was about to leave the wake, I was supposed to say goodbye to her best friend, a fellow journo, but the bestfriend told me, no, you shouldn’t say goodbye when you leave a wake, according to Chinese tradition.
I don’t believe that mumbo-jumbo this socmed influencer is saying in the captions. The fuck! I forgot to buy my pills to stabilize my estrogen and I’ve been off it for a week and now I’m so unhinged. My menstrual cycle is out of sync (it came back after 10 days), I have pimples, I’m bloated, and my mental capacity is zero. I was unproductive last Friday and I couldn’t figure out why. It was really basura day.
Then I suffered from debilitating headaches on Friday and yesterday. Then I bled. And bled. I’m aching all over. I wanted to kill somebody in the past two days. Oh Lord, save me from myself. 🤦🏻♀️
Pizza for lunch because I can’t be bothered. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I walked to the weekend market this morning to get out of this funk that I’m in. It did help for a while but here I am, back to my aches and murderous intent.
After almost a half year, I’m back to long distance walking.
From church to the drugstore to the walking/jogging path.
Plantar fasciitis be damned. I went out to walk again, about 3.5 km for an hour, after shopping for veggies and my pills from TGP. I needed to beat this sluggishness, irritability, and depression due to drop in estrogen with some serotonin boost from exercise.
Clouds perpetually on top of our mountain. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I did everything on foot—from going to the weekend market, to going to church, veggie shopping, and a trip to the pharmacy—I need to keep my body moving. I need to keep the headaches at bay because they’re just unbearable.
Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I can’t do anything about the nightsweats but I can take melatonin so I can sleep well. When I was in HK in February, I remember it was 11 degrees C and I saw some locals in puffer vests while I was sweating in my thin Uniqlo shirt. That’s how absurd my perimenopause symptoms were. Not a night passes by when I don’t wake up at 3 am because of too much sweating and it’s so hard to get back to sleep. Then I have to wake up again at 5 am to prepare my children’s lunch and breakfast.
My circadian rhythm is out of whack. Everything is out of whack. The bad thing is that the symptoms last for years until you hit menopause. 😵💫
A mojito to cap my day. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I was at an event at One Ayala last Wednesday to say hi to a CEO and stalk one source. I only stayed for a bit because I needed to bounce to a cocktail event in Shangri-la BGC. The distance is less than 4 km and the drive normally takes 12 mins.
But nhoooooo… That drive took me more than an hour! The entire McKinley Rd from Edsa to 5th Ave was frozen! 😭
I played old skool Pacman arcade while I waited for the person I was stalking.
Suffice to say I was really late to the BGC event.
Christmas rush is already here. 🫠
I got home at 12 midnight. 😵💫 Then I drove back to Makati yesterday (Thursday) to have dinner with some editors and some executives of the company that hosted the dinner.
The traffic is the same: horrible.
At Power Plant Mall. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I wanted to browse a bit but…
It took some super human to keep myself from buying books.
Morning sunlight filtered by my handmade curtains. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I took time off yesterday because I didn’t sleep from Sunday night until the rains abated at 5 am Monday. The winds were still strong, the tailend of Typhoon Uwan.
The editor from the land of bubblegum pop, however, was lacking in tact and I didn’t like how she took my emergency leave. Like she was saying I was already off for more than a week and then I’m off again. I told her I worked my ass off last week. It’s just that today the government has declared a national state of calamity. Let me rest.
I complained to a Pinoy colleague that this is the problem with people who have never experienced catastrophe upon catastrophe: they lack empathy. I think people from the land of bubblegum pop do lack that because they’re so comfortable in their world that they forget that people outside their bubble struggle immensely.
There’s the eye of Sauron…… And Sierra Madre blinds Uwan when the eye crashes into her, shredding it 🙌
Now the Caraballo and Cordillera mountain ranges are tearing apart the Cat 4 typhoon’s center.
I guess the worst is over for us here in the south as Uwan weakens. We still have power and water pressure. Batangas and Cavite are not doing well though. Some Transco lines are down.
